


Closer Than the Stars

by pr0nz69



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Character Study, Death, Dream Sex, M/M, Obsession, Redemption, Regret, Sounding, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, Trauma, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:01:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27318178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr0nz69/pseuds/pr0nz69
Summary: Líf casts his gaze heavenward. “The stars are beautiful.” He lifts a hand, tracing out a constellation in the air. “That does not mean that they are within our reach.”———Dimitri has always been haunted by ghosts.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Líf
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	Closer Than the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Have some spooky, sexy, jelly-skelly angst!
> 
> I'm just saying, I shipped Dimitri/Líf before Forging Bonds made it cool. ;)

Long has Dimitri concerned himself with ghosts.

Mother was gray-white as nacre when he saw her last, wasting still from the sickness that took her. He grew up beside her, then abandoned her in Duscur when he came to carry Father around his neck, Stepmother in his arms, and Glenn on his back. He didn’t put them down until Rodrigue and Felix bade him to. He thought he was mostly finished with ghosts then.

“Are you here to join me on the side where you belong?”

But he’s standing at the foot of a hill like a burial mound in the monochrome of midnight, far from Faerghus but not from ghosts—never from ghosts. He looks up, sees moonlight glint like broken glass off arcs of white bone, and tastes ice in his breath.

“I needed to speak to you.” Even his words freeze when they drip from his tongue.

The grass is black, shadowed by the slope of the hill. At the top, it’s pale as ash. Light and shadow—there is no in-between, and ghosts shouldn’t exist here.

“To speak to me of foolish ideals and hopeless futures?”

The man standing at the crest is bright like a ghost and almost hurts to look at. Dimitri does not stare into the cavity of his chest, but he does see it; there is no heart there, no viscera, either. There’s just bone and empty space where it all should be, and it’s strangely clinical.

Dimitri looks into his eyes instead, because if there will be emotion, that is the only place where it can manifest, and he wants to see it.  _ Needs _ to see it.

He climbs the hill, a desecration of the one buried thereunder.

“No. Tonight, I wish to speak about you, Líf.”

The deep red of Líf’s eyes does not avail itself of emotion. His hand moves slowly to his scabbard. “I can guide you here, if you wish.” His voice is toneless, but his fingers curl around the hilt of his weapon—Sökkvabekkr, that unholy blade wrought in the realm of the dead. He holds it so intimately that Dimitri can scarcely look away.

“I do not wish.” He resists the urge to touch Gradivus; he cannot have it come to blows here tonight. “I have been speaking with Prince Alfonse.”

Now Líf narrows his eyes, and while the red in them is unfamiliar, Dimitri recognizes the crease between the brows, the glint of concern that flares and dies within a moment. “Whatever that fool prince has to say, I do not care to hear it.” He drops his hand from his hip and turns—suddenly, as if he were in a hurry. “Unless you wish to die, go.”

He must be in a hurry.

A wind rises in their midst, filling the distance between them with susurrations. Dimitri clutches at his cape as it flaps behind him, shakes his hair from his one good eye. But the furs draped from Líf’s shoulders do not lift from his back, and his hair remains still and lank over his ears. He walks against the current of the wind but seems almost to glide.

_ I am no longer human, _ he once said.

“Wait!” Dimitri cries out, but his voice is thrown back to him, and Líf does not wait. And so he adds—recklessly, desperately: “ _ Alfonse _ !”

And Líf stops.

“Tell me,” Dimitri says, “about that.  _ Please _ .”

He hits the ground hard, a knee on his chest and another between his legs. The wet grass scrapes at the back of his head, pulls at his hair like fingers rising from the earth.

“Do  _ not _ ”—Sökkvabekkr hums at his throat, the heat of its steel a warning—“call me by that name!”

Dimitri looks up into the hard lines of Líf’s ribcage. There truly is no heart beating within it. If there is nothing to protect, he thinks, then is it not just an empty prison cell, vacated of even its inmate?

He says, as if to test it, “Will you kill me, then?”

Líf exhales; Dimitri wonders how when he has no windpipes, no lungs, perhaps no mouth beneath his mask. “I have cut down innumerable mortals, innocents prime among them. Do not mistake me for your soft-hearted prince.”

Ah, Dimitri thinks, so the heart did not escape its prison but was trapped there, neglected, until it rotted away.

He places a gauntlet on Sökkvabekkr’s blade and pushes it back. “Have you no regrets at all?”

Líf draws back, so quickly and clumsily that his armor rattles, but Dimitri thinks of bones. “Do not look for me again.”

By the time Dimitri has clambered back to his feet, there is no sign of him.

-

Dimitri doesn’t sleep, of course—he never does when he’s haunted. By the first lights of dawn, he’s patrolling the castle. Nobody questions him except for Robin, who thinks she’s made a mistake with the scheduled rounds. He assures her that she hasn’t, dodges her questions inquiring into what he’s doing, and confines himself to his room again.

By mid-morning, he goes, against his better judgement, to find Princess Sharena.

Her eyes soften as she pours his tea in her sitting room when he states his purpose for calling on her.

“Líf is my brother from another world and another time.” She seats herself across from him and takes up her cup. “He’s a touchy subject with my brother. I think he sees himself in Líf more than he would like to admit, and that frightens him.”

Dimitri bows his head. “I apologize for bringing it up.”

Sharena shakes her head. “You needn’t. Truly, I wish we could do more for him. But my brother does not wish to get involved.”

There is a clock carved in the shape of a bird hanging on the far wall. Its ticks seem to crescendo in their silence. Dimitri brings his cup to his lips and drinks noisily. The tea is hot water on his tongue, but he swallows it.

“It must be strange,” he says then, “to interact with an alternate version of oneself.”

Sharena smiles a little. “Alfonse and I are used to it. We’ve seen many versions of ourselves come into our Askr. Líf is different, though.” She lowers her cup to its saucer, brow pensive. “He represents something that my brother could never accept.” Her hand hovers, momentarily, over the left side of her breast before she continues. “He watched me die.”

Dimitri forces down another mouthful of tea, ignoring how it scalds his throat. “He mentioned to me once that everyone was dead by his hand.”

Sharena gazes into her drink. “He only wanted to save our kingdom. Our people. But...”

She does not continue the thought.

“I understand some of that pain,” Dimitri says at length. I will take care when speaking to him.”

Sharena nods once. “He will not speak to me—I think he’s ashamed. But perhaps he will find some solace in speaking to you.”

She hesitates, then adds, “I’ve read about you, King Dimitri. I know about your past, your journey. And if there’s anyone here who can reach him... Well, it might be you.”

Dimitri pauses with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Princess...”

“But I don’t think he’s beyond saving at all.” She smiles then, so cheerfully that it disarms him. “He is my brother, after all.”

-

The hill rises up along the south side of the castle, cupping it in a basin of greenery. At its highest point, in the space between two watchtowers, it is cleared of all but a few conifers, and it’s beneath one of these—a larch in the midst of its autumn molt—that Líf sits, still and glassy-eyed as a gargoyle.

Dimitri wonders if anyone else can see him—this shade of a man who only appears under moonlight. He wonders if he looks mad scrambling up this hill to speak to nothing but open air.

But Líf speaks to him.

“What is it that you want from me, king of ruination?” He makes no move to draw his weapon, but Dimitri keeps his distance.

“I am no king of ruination,” he says, firmly. “I have committed crimes—countless atrocities that I cannot hope to atone for. But I will not let my sins define my legacy. No longer, at least. I’ve told you this already: I will make mine a legacy of peace, for the sake of my people.”

“And I told you,” Líf says, at last raising his eyes to him, “that those are pretty words, if empty.”

Dimitri frowns. “Yes. But I choose to believe there is still beauty in the world, difficult though it may be to find.”

Líf casts his gaze heavenward. “The stars are beautiful.” He lifts a hand, tracing out a constellation in the air. “That does not mean that they are within our reach.”

Dimitri looks up, too. The stars  _ are _ beautiful, drips of white scattered within the folds of an unstretched canvas. “There are things closer to us than the stars,” he says.

“Perhaps. But you have yet to answer my question. What do you want from me?”

Dimitri kneels in the grass, perhaps too close to Líf, though no objection is raised. “I feel,” he says, a little timidly, “that we have much to learn from one another. And I wish to know you. You are different from the Prince Alfonse I know.”

Líf’s eyes harden. “There is nothing I wish to say to you. Go and see your yet-uncorrupted prince. You will find nothing but death and despair should you choose to continue associating with me.”

Dimitri doesn’t know how to respond to that but with silence, and so for several minutes, no words pass between them as they observe the moon’s slow arc across the sky.

“These are Princess Sharena’s apartments, are they not?” Dimitri asks after a time, recognizing the cluster of darkened windows in the southeast tower.

Líf folds his knees up and leans over them, and they plunge through his chest, scraping against his breastbone. Dimitri winces, but Líf seems not to notice. He says, “What does it matter to you?”

“I met with her today,” Dimitri admits, then hesitates. “I... You don’t speak to Princess Sharena?”

Líf does not look at him. “No. I haven’t the right to.”

“I think that she would appreciate it. She wishes the best for you, you know.”

“And what do  _ you _ know of Sharena’s heart?” Líf growls. “This is not  _ my _ Sharena. She does not know me—and  _ should not  _ know me. She has her beloved brother. She is happy. That... That is enough for me.”

There’s something in his voice that strikes Dimitri—a glimmer of passion amidst the resignation. It is something new—a spark of hope that can be nurtured, perhaps, into a flame. It tugs at Dimitri’s heart, demanding refuge from the man who created it and yet who would just as soon snuff it out.

“You would pass up this chance to make peace with her?” he asks before he can help himself. “Should my father ever be summoned here—or my stepmother, or Glenn, or Rodrigue—even if they were of another world, I... I think I would like to speak with them.”

“You speak of things about which you know nothing. And would that they despise you for what you have become?”

Dimitri chuckles a little. “Yes. Perhaps you are right. But even if they were to scold me or even hate me—well, I think I would rather know than not.”

Líf throws back his head, and his eyes swallow moonlight. “ _ No _ . I cannot face Sharena. This or any other. I have destroyed so many lives for the chance to bring her back. It is not a path she ever would have approved of. I knew that, and yet I...” He blinks quickly and in succession; Dimitri looks away to afford him some privacy. “I am not the Alfonse she once loved—the Alfonse she  _ does _ love. I am simply the specter of a monstrous future, one which almost came to pass in this world as well. And the crimes I have committed cannot— _ must not _ —ever be forgiven.”

“And yet,” Dimitri says softly, “she worries over you as she worries over her own brother. Do her feelings not matter at all?”

Líf lowers his eyes but has no response to that.

“I lost myself,” Dimitri says after a moment. “For five long years, I lost myself utterly. I was as a feral beast, preying upon the wicked and innocent alike. In my moments of clarity, I believed that I could not be saved. That I could only descend further into madness.”

“Yes. Such is the nature of it. A mind given over to madness is not so easily restored—”

“But it  _ can _ be.” Dimitri grips his knees to steady his shaking hands. “I am damaged, and I have sinned, but true as all that may be, so, too, is the fact that I was  _ saved _ . There is someone who brought me back from the brink, who refused to give up on me. And it terrifies me to think of where I would be today had he done what he was well within his rights to do and abandoned me.”

Líf does not answer, and so Dimitri rises. “I hope you will let someone save you, too,” he says gently. “Whoever that person may be.”

He leaves him there atop the hill and returns to the castle.

-

In all his waking hours, Dimitri is consumed by thoughts of Líf. So it has been with all of his ghosts, and so it does not surprise him when he dreams a reality so convincing he cannot be certain it isn’t a memory.

The hill is there and Líf atop it. Dimitri is barefooted, garbed in naught but his dressing gown. There is wind; he watches it bend the grass, hears it chatter through the trees. But he is not cold. The opposite, in fact—he is warm, so warm he might be feverish, and yet he does not feel ill. He feels restless,  _ needy _ for something he mustn’t acknowledge.

That neediness swells between his legs as he stands before Líf. He clasps his hands in front of it and prays it will not be seen. “I-I must speak with you again,“ he stutters.

Líf sighs, his breath a spray of bluish mist in the air. “You are not here to speak with me tonight. You are here for another purpose.”

Dimitri presses his legs together, squeezes his hands tighter. “What do you mean to say?”

“Would you fuck me, hopeless king?” Líf’s tone is measured, far too blasé for such words, and now Dimitri’s cheeks swell, too. “Or have me fuck you, perhaps? Either way, I have no means by which such a union could be consummated. All that remains of my flesh you see here.”

He traces a finger from his forehead to the tip of his nose, the skin so pale it refracts moonlight. “Even my jaw has rotted away to bone and sinew.”

“I,” Dimitri says, his resolve slipping away in all the heat. “I do not care. I will have all of you—any part of you that you choose to give.”

Líf rises slowly, as if from a coffin. “Is this what you want?”

He shoves Dimitri, slams him against the larch so that needles shower his head. Dimitri is caught breathless, and his cock lurches against the constraints of his smallclothes.

“Is this what you want?” Líf repeats, and slides Dimitri’s dressing gown up around his hips.

“ _ Yes _ ,” Dimitri gasps. His stomach is clammy with sweat; he shivers when Líf rests a gauntlet over his navel.

“Why?” Líf’s eyes fall to his smallclothes, damp with sweat and his early fluid, but he makes no move to take them down.

“I don’t know.” Dimitri squirms against the tree, against Líf’s hand. “I want to be touched.”

“By a corpse?”

“By you, Líf.”

To Dimitri’s great surprise, Líf laughs—briefly, harshly, but he laughs.

“You are a fool,” he says.

“I have been told as much.”

“Then you haven’t the right to complain when this doesn’t go the way you’re anticipating.”

Líf lifts his hand from Dimitri’s stomach. He pauses a moment, then another—and then tugs his smallclothes down until they catch around his thighs. Dimitri shivers as the heat of his penis is exposed to the chill in the night air. Líf trails a finger along the length of it, then claims it in his hand. Dimitri bites his lip.

“Won’t you take off your gauntlet?” he manages, his hips quivering.

Rather than answering, Líf takes Dimitri’s right wrist into his free hand and strokes a thumb over its pulse. He must feel how fast it’s beating, Dimitri thinks, and flushes.

But Líf doesn’t comment on that. Instead, he lifts Dimitri’s hand—and without warning plunges it into his chest. Dimitri shudders but resists the urge to draw back. It feels as if he is elbow-deep in a frozen lake. Líf leaves his hand inside of him, draped between two rib bones.

“Is this what you wished to feel?”

Dimitri swallows, guides his fingers along the bone, and is surprised when Líf shivers. There is no heart within this cage. But there is sensation. Feeling.

“Yes,” he answers at last.

Líf releases his penis. “Very well.”

Carefully, he undoes the ties and slides the gauntlet off his left hand. Then he does the same to the right. Dimitri feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the sight of tattered phalanges, of discolored wrist bones. Líf touches a fingertip to his penis, and Dimitri pulls back his hand and jerks his legs together on instinct.

“I thought not.”

And Líf withdraws from him.

“ _ No _ !”

Dimitri slides down the tree until he’s sitting, legs raised and spread as he presents his bottom. “Here.” He trails a finger along his crevice. “While you touch me between the legs with the other.  _ Please _ .”

“You would force yourself for the sake of your pride.”

Dimitri shakes his head. “It was a shock at first, I admit. But I am ready.”

Líf gazes at him, considering. Then he kneels, leans in, and dips his left hand toward Dimitri’s bottom. “Do not complain to me when you come to regret this.”

Dimitri wraps his arms around his legs to keep them spread as Líf touches a skeletal fingertip to his opening. The index bone slips in easily.

“Go on,” Dimitri breathes, shifting his hips, maneuvering the finger inside of him. “Give me everything you have.”

Líf slides in his middle finger. Dimitri flinches, steadies himself against the tree even as its bark scrapes at his bared back. The fingers advance deeper within him; breathlessly, he allows them. His cock twitches upward, and Líf clasps his other hand around it, holding it secure but not tight.

“Keep going,” Dimitri groans. He rocks back onto the fingers, winces at the sharpness of them. Unshod of their flesh, the bones are cold and hard, more like instruments than anatomy. Unusual though the sensation is, however, it is not unpleasant, and Dimitri encourages the progression of the appendages with his wet moans and firm, upright cock.

Líf begins to tease the tip of his penis, first skating around it, then slipping his finger in and out of the slit. Thin and smooth and lubricated by pre-seed, the bone reaches deep, stiff and straight as a rod in that narrow, intimate space. Dimitri must hook his arms tighter around his legs to keep from kicking. It’s a new sensation to be penetrated thusly, ticklish and frightening and undeniably arousing—and it’s so uniquely Líf, with his nearly decayed sexuality, that the mere thought of it, the realization that he’s being fucked by this man, has Dimitri already closing in on his peak.

But the fingers within him find their target first, and they are the catalysts for his climax. His cock erupts, splashing seed onto his stomach and chest. He grunts through his orgasm, touching his slackening penis with a sweat-damped palm.  _ More, _ he almost begs.

But Líf removes his hands so suddenly and so carelessly that Dimitri is left cold and empty, dragged from his euphoria.

“What?” he asks blearily. Líf is doing up his gauntlets again. Dimitri sits up, suddenly afraid. Líf’s eyes are bright red, glowing against the paleness of his flesh.

“What is it?” Dimitri asks in a panic. “Have I offended you?”

Líf stands and turns from him. “You only wish to use me for your own pleasure. None of that meant anything at all to me.”

_ That isn’t it, _ Dimitri thinks to say, but sunlight is dissolving the scene around him, and he wakes in his bedchamber within the castle, the front of his smallclothes wet between his legs.

-

Líf does not appear the next night, nor the night after. Dimitri thinks, irrationally, that his lurid dream has been intruded upon and that he has been deemed unworthy of further association. He thinks about the symbolism of the dream and concludes— _ irrationally _ —that he has been self-serving. He has never stopped to consider what it is that Líf wants and has spoken at length of his own path to redemption. Perhaps Líf has only been a stepping stone to that end.

Perhaps he never really cared for him at all.

But he sojourns to the hill nightly. It is a week and a handful of days until Líf appears there again.

“And so you come again.” His tone is jaded, but there is no anger in it.

“I thought you had—“ Dimitri struggles to find the words.

“Died?” Líf sounds almost amused.

“ _ Gone _ ,” Dimitri finishes.

“Where is there left for me to go? To Hel?” Líf lifts his brows. “I despise that realm, and yet that is where I will return, in time. Do not hasten my departure there with your suppositions.”

“That isn’t it.” Dimitri looks away, his cheeks reddening. “I thought that you did not care to see me again.”

Líf gazes up at him but says nothing.

Dimitri continues, “I realized I have been preaching at you, and I have never stopped to ask what it is  _ you _ want.”

That gives Líf further pause. “What I want,” he repeats at length.

“That’s right.” Dimitri settles himself on his knees beside him, closer than he thought he dared to. “I have decided what  _ my _ future will hold. But what of you? What is it that drives you forward? What do you live for?”

Líf closes his eyes. “There  _ is _ no future for me,” he says. “Here or anywhere. I do not ‘live’ for anything because I do not live at all. I only  _ remain _ , linger—until that day comes which will see me wandering eternally through oblivion.”

Dimitri’s heart aches. Perhaps Líf is right—that his time is running out. That he hasn’t long left until he...

“And yet—” Dimitri reaches up, tentatively, and touches Líf’s bare cheek; Líf flinches, freezes, but does not draw back. “At this moment, you feel alive to me.”

Líf’s breath shudders.

“So in this moment, what do you want? Give me something—anything.” And then, as in the dream: “I will have all of you—any part of you that you choose to give. No matter how monstrous you may find yourself.”

Líf’s lungless breath rattles through his bones, accelerated. “Touch me,” he says at last. “My skin, my flesh—I wish to feel warmth there again, before I can no longer.”

It is not like the dream; this is Líf’s own will. Dimitri will oblige it happily.

“Yes,” he whispers, raising his other hand to cup Líf’s cheek above the mask. “That, I shall do willingly.”

The skin is cold—but it is human besides. Dimitri flattens his palms against it and hopes the warmth transfers. Líf lowers his eyelids but does not close them. After a few moments, he lifts his own hand and, wordlessly, lays it atop Dimitri’s shoulder. Impotent, it does not grip or push but rests there, and Dimitri, of course, allows it.

And without much thinking on it, he leans in, smooths the hair from Líf’s eyes, and kisses his forehead.

Líf, somehow, allows it.

-

“Someday soon,” Líf breathes against Dimitri’s chest as the dawn begins to flare around them, “this corpse will rot away entirely.”

Dimitri does not want to think about that; he tucks his chin over Líf’s head, as if that will protect him from the rot.

“Hel’s magic, which holds it together, will fade with the memory of her. And I will be released at last, into the sweet embrace of death. It is a kinder fate than I deserve.”

“Irrespective of our paths in life,” Dimitri murmurs into his hair, swallowing back emotion, “we all die eventually. Death makes equals of all men. You are no more or less deserving of it than any other.”

Líf sighs, his breath cold as ice through Dimitri’s overcoat. “And yet the thought of facing it on my own fills me with terror. Veronica is dead already, and of course I attended her to her last breath. But I will not be afforded the same comfort.”

“Then I will stay with you,” Dimitri says, earnestly. “Go in my arms if that will bring you comfort. I swear to remain here in Askr until you do.”

Líf, to his surprise, chuckles. “Do as you wish when the time comes,” he says. “But for now, just let me rest here awhile longer.”

Dimitri does, one hand buried in Líf’s hair, the other flush against his cheek. But the sun rises quickly, and with its ascent, Líf disentangles himself and stands.

“You need rest,” he says, and turns to go.

“Wait!” Dimitri cries, scrambling to his feet.

“No.” Líf glances over his shoulder. “Do not detain me, Dimitri. I will be here again when you wake. So rest.”

Dimitri lets him go. It’s the first time Líf has called him by name. Perhaps it will be the last time. He hopes not. But he trusts him now.

So he lets him go.


End file.
